Bill Belichick has a plan. It’s just not entirely clear what it is yet.
He’s standing by third year quarterback Mac Jones despite his 2022 regression. It’s a reasonable bet. Jones backslid under the borderline malpractice of play-caller Matt Patricia last season. Now he’ll play in an offense devised by former Penn State and Houston Texans head coach Bill O’Brien. Sure, the offensive line is a mess and the receiving corps is still a bunch of William H. Macys without a leading man, but he should get better in 2023.
But if he doesn’t, well, there is no Plan B.
I don’t mean that in a metaphorical way like the options behind him on the depth chart are underwhelming. There is no contingency for Mac Jones at the moment because there are currently no other quarterbacks on the New England Patriots’ roster.
As the NFL cutdown date loomed, the Patriots’ moves to turn a 90-man preseason roster into the necessary 53 for the regular season came calling for the team’s passers. First went Trace McSorely, which was more or less predictable. Then came second-year pro Bailey Zappe, who’d exceeded expectations and gone 2-0 as a starter in place of Jones in 2022. His release appeared to leave backup duties to undrafted rookie free agent Malik Cunningham … only minutes later, he got the ax as well.
Bill Belichick looked at Mac Jones and truly decided the only way to motivate him was by burning his ships like Hernan Cortes https://t.co/lxj02w1Xm1
— Christian D'Andrea (@TrainIsland) August 29, 2023
There’s some logic to these moves. If Belichick were confident two of the three quarterbacks he’d released would clear waivers he could them stash them on the practice squad, allowing him to retain players at other positions of need. That’s a big gamble, however — any team can submit a waiver claim for anyone the Patriots released on Tuesday and slide them onto their own 53-man rosters.
If New England is indeed done with all three of the backup quarterbacks it rostered this preseason, help could arrive from elsewhere. The Arizona Cardinals discarded Colt McCoy as part of a transparent effort to lose as many games as possible in 2023 (admittedly, McCoy’s presence wouldn’t have made much of a difference there). Trevor Siemian was also a casualty on cutdown day. Carson Wentz and Nick Foles are both free agents.
Would any of those guys, forced to learn a new offense on the fly, be better backups than the players who’d spent the entire offseason with the Patriots? That’s tough to say, but Belichick ultimately felt this was a risk worth taking.
And thus, with 53-man rosters submitted, Mac Jones did something Tom Brady never did. He was the only listed quarterback on the roster. There’s clearly more to this strategy that meets the eye; when waivers clear on Wednesday we’ll have a better idea of what exactly it is.
